2. The journal
Following thepaneldiscussion,I openedthe sessionto questions from the floor. Because I had just become the Editor-in-Chief, and thus perhaps not surprisingly, the room wanted to hear my views 2 The source ofthis adage is ambiguous, but according to Wikipedia, Ronald Coase (of The Nature of the Firm (1937) fame) used a variation of this phrase in a talk at the University of Virginia in the early 1960s (en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ronald Coase, accessed on 20 February 2016). The phrase also appears, inter alia, in an article of The Economist (2010). on the future direction of Management Accounting Research—that is, the future of the journal instead of the panelist’s views on the future ofthe field. I emphatically replied that Management Accounting Research will continue to be committed to diversity across all relevant dimensions of topics, settings, methods, and disciplinary lenses that one can envisage to rigorously examine all manner of relevant management accounting issues broadly conceived (see also Van der Stede, 2015b). On the question of which articles Management Accounting Research “accepts”, I responded that in the realm of the broad scope I set out in my reply to the earlier question, studies are assessed on their incremental contribution based on a robust execution through the chosen method. I hastened to add, though, that every study has weaknesses. Short of these weaknesses being fundamental, that is, short of these being flaws rather than merely weaknesses, we expect that authors carefully discuss their studies’ limitations so that the findings can be properly interpreted. But we should not let perfect be the enemy of good. Better to have a diamond with some imperfections than a pebble without. A study does not have to be perfect—indeed none is or can be; instead we are looking for compelling incremental contributions to knowledge with sufficient rigor, one study at a time.
